


Caught on Camera

by Mochas N Mayhem (KoohiiCafe)



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Merlin before he was Merlin, he's going to be a pain in Merlin's arse and they both know it, young Galahad is insufferable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 21:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoohiiCafe/pseuds/Mochas%20N%20Mayhem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he was Merlin, he was a complete prodigy in the field of technology with an excellent eye for observation, and worked as a CCTV operator. And he was <i>very</i> good at his job. This is the story of how Merlin met Galahad, and how he came to become Merlin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught on Camera

**Author's Note:**

> I set out to write a brief 'what if' to post on tumblr after I got ideas while watching 'Caught on Camera' with Nick Wallace. This is what happened instead. Whoops?

A young Scotsman, a complete prodigy in the field of technology with an excellent eye for observation, works as a CCTV operator. He’s working for an extremely well off elite pharmaceuticals company, and he is incredibly talented at what he does. Despite this, he’s not well received by his rich employers, due to both his nationality and his poor background; he’s been relegated to the night shift with not much hope of change anytime soon.

Normally, the night shift is fairly boring. The company has the best security that can be bought, given the deep pockets of the company owners, and it’s almost impossible to get past. It’s why the young Scot is surprised when, one night, he _just_ catches movement on one of his monitors out of the corner of his eye.

He takes immediate action. Within seconds he has the camera pulled up on his main screen, his fingers flying over his keyboard to pull up all surrounding cameras on side monitors. There’s nothing and no one there. He trusts his senses though; he knows what he saw. He begins a methodical search of surveillance for the entire building, starting from the original camera and spreading outward.

It seems like an eternity has passed before he finds something, although it’s a mere few minutes in reality; a floor up and on the opposite side of the building, he catches sight of a man in a suit picking the lock of a door. It’s the office of one of the company’s vice presidents. The young Scot swears to himself, and swiftly contacts the police on the secure line provided by the company security system.

It’s the first time he’s had to do so, but that doesn’t stop him from being brutally efficient as he works with them to catch the intruder. It’s over before he knows it, the man is being carted out of the building in police custody, and he’s left in peace for the rest of his shift. The next morning he received a commendation from his employers, and that’s the end of it.

Or it should be. Something seems off to him. Something feels just slightly strange about the entire ordeal. The office the man had been breaking into was directly beside that of the company president, which he thinks would have been a more likely target. Beside that, he remembers the officers who’d taken the intruder from the building; they’d seemed excessively handsy with the man, overly brutal in the way they captured and bound him. Additionally, while he _had_ received a commendation for his part in catching the intruder, his employers had seemed even colder than usual when they spoke with him about it.

He’s on shift again the next night. As usual, it’s completely peaceful; he has the entire evening to himself. It’s a long night to face alone. Boring.

He shouldn’t, but the young Scot can’t resist. He finds himself reviewing footage from the previous evening, in detail. The intruder had been skilled, and had gotten deep into the building before he’d drawn the operator’s attention. The Scot starts there, when he’d first noticed the intruder, and backtracks the man. He can see, at several times, where the suited man seems to be talking to himself, although there’s no audio and the footage is too grainy to read lips even if he knew how to. He tracks the intruder backwards until he finds where he entered the building; from the thirteenth floor, strangely enough. He comes in through a window, his entrance sleek and skilled as he slides it open and slips inside.

Having found the intruder’s entrance, the operator fast forwards to after the police had arrived on scene. He watches the way the man fights closer than he’d been able to the night before, and finds himself almost entranced with the way the suited figure seems to dance his way around the officers. The young Scot imagines that if there had been a few less officers, the intruder might have even escaped. He’s too outnumbered though, and eventually the officers manage to down him.

They don’t simply stop there, however. He’d missed it the night before, distracted by the officer he’d been on the line with during the entire ordeal, but the officers on the scene beat at the intruder brutally once he’s down, with fists and feet, for far longer than is necessarily before they finally pin and cuff him. Then, as they drag the man out, they seem to shake him around far more than seems called for.

The young operator acts on a hunch as he picks up the phone. Instead of using the security-secured line, he dials the local station directly. He asks about the incident the evening before, asks after the arrested intruder, but the officer he speaks to is confused; they have no record of an incident happening the previous night. He thanks the officer and hangs up.

He acts on instinct. He shouldn’t, but he knows he’s skilled enough to get away with it. He hacks his way into the login of the vice president whose office the suited man had broken into. ‘Best security that can be bought’ or not, he’s not a wizard with technology for nothing. Once he’s accessed the vice president’s account, he starts with looking into the man’s emails.

He hits gold immediately.

The company is corrupt. The life saving medicines the pharmaceutical produces are life saving, yes, but they’re also a cover for a rather deep running drug scheme. The company president seems to be unaware, but judging by the emails he finds, it’s the vice presidents who hold the true power within the company. They’re powerful enough, even, to have control over several corrupt police officers.

The secure line, the Scot thinks. It’s not to the local station, but to the company’s own ‘men.’ The same men who captured the intruder and dragged him off somewhere. Somewhere that certainly isn’t the police station.

The young Scotsman does the unthinkable. He continues hacking through the system, through the accounts of the other vice presidents, until he finds the flurry of emails exchanged regarding the previous night’s break in. He finds a location where their man had taken the suited gentleman. He finds their order to terminate the intruder once they’d obtained whatever information they could from him.

He leaves his post, and his position as a CCTV operator for the company. It’s foolish, but it’s his fault the intruder had been caught and taken away as he had; he has a responsibility to help the man.

He stops quickly by his flat first, to change from his uniform into something darker and with more mobility. He takes his old switchblade with him, the one he’s had since his ‘rebellious’ days as a teen, and then sets off to save the suited gentleman he’d gotten captured.

It’s not an easy task, but he’s no blushing, trembling virgin to fighting; that particular cherry had been popped years ago. He’s skilled with his switchblade, and has the advantage of surprise. He picks the locks of the old warehouse at the address he’d found, and sneaks silently in. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to go far before he hears a man scream. He doesn’t recognize the voice, has never heard it before in his life, but he doesn’t have to guess at who it belongs to.

The room the suited man is being held in holds only the man and two of the corrupt officers from the night before. The young Scot doesn’t let himself linger over the rather shocking state of the intruder, but instead launches himself at the officers. It’s been awhile since he’s had a proper rough and tumble, but somehow he manages to take them down before any alarm is raised. Once they’re knocked out, he turns his attention to their prisoner.

The suit is gone; the man has been left in only his pants, and his bare skin is blood-streaked where he’s been cut and sliced up. He’s conscious, however, and weak as he is, he reacts immediately when his bonds are cut. He’s up, out of the chair he’d been tied to, and thanking the Scot for his ‘welcome, but unnecessary assistance, he had the situation well in hand, thank you.’

The young Scotsman snorts, and when the gentleman sways and looks ready to collapse, he rolls his eyes and steps up to him. He doesn’t give the man a choice, wrapping an arm behind his back and forcing him to loop an arm over his own shoulders. He informs him firmly that ‘like hell you had it under control, now just shut up and let’s get out of here,’ and then escapes with the man.

The gentleman passes out in his backseat on the way to A&E. He leaves him in the doctors’ capable hands there, then heads to the police station with a copy of every bit of information he’d stolen from his employers before leaving his post. He returns home and finally passes out himself, not allowing himself to think on what he’ll do now that he’s all but destroyed his own employer, and thus his own job.

Life goes on after that. He finds a new job, working as a county CCTV operator, and thinks only occasionally on the man he’d rescued, but doesn’t imagine he’ll ever see him again.

That belief lasts until the day he returns home to his flat after a long shift to find his door unlocked and a suited gentleman settled on his couch with a tumbler of his best brandy.

‘A new position has just opened up with my employers,’ the man says, sipping at the brandy casually. ‘I thought you might be interested. How would you like to change the world?’

He swears at the man for breaking into his flat. The man smirks, insufferably telling him that ‘it’s your own fault, you shouldn’t have made it so easy to get in.’

It’s his first clue that the gentleman is going to be a right pain in his arse. He accepts the offer anyway. Over a year later, he’s given title of Merlin, and he learns rather quickly that yes, yes Galahad _is_ going to be a pain in his arse, for much longer than he’d ever thought.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're on tumblr, you can find me at [MakethWoman](http://makethwoman.tumblr.com)!


End file.
